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Your prod at my original question turns it around for response. Thanks.

I see the issue of target audience bounded by three primary factors at the Me level (personal, instructor, faculty, teacher level):

▪ Pain for gain threshold (resonant value proposition)
▪ Making my teaching life easier and/or more rewarding
▪ Making the learning experience for my students more engaging and empowering

Alan Levine’s Amazing Stories of Openness gets at some of resonant value aspects, and the really visceral “why would I do this” terrain. But it may not be enough for some who will be asking more about the reward system generally for participation. It really is a personal choice for faculty, teachers and instructor whether to engage. Some will want to, so the process of engaging has to be smooth and elegant as an authoring and reuse workflow.

Brian Lamb’s post prior to the OpenEd 2009 conference that asks, Are You Open Enough? is instructive and is a great starting point for working with folks who opt in, or who are on the cusp of opting in.

Heck, it is the agenda for an agile training program that models straightforward open practices across various disciplines, and provides a viral, convivial pass-along mechanism for working with colleagues.

The part about making the learning experience for students more engaging and empowering is more like an outcome that instructors might use to test the open strategy to see whether it works or needs further adjustment.

All of this lives in a larger context that looks something like:

Me –> my working colleagues –> my peers –> my institution –> my systemic academic orbit –> the world

There needs to be an implementation strategy for all those circles as we move outward. We saw at least one country-wide strategy on the systemic academic orbit level from Fred Mulder, from Open University of the Netherlands. I’m sure there are others out there, too.

Cracking the Me level participation seems to be on the critical path. Demonstrating simple, powerful and resonant ways of getting there is what needs to be solicited and shared. And, I don’t think the proponents of the open movement need to do this all by themselves, either.

d.